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Monday, 5 October 2009

Criminally Underrated Albums of the 2000's: #09

Delays – You See Colours

Delays' debut album, Faded Seaside Glamour, was a dreamy pop masterpiece with it's soundscapes and vocal harmonies recalling a lost English glamour. It was stately and serene and beefed the hell up for this, it's follow up. Sure the falsetto vocals and lush harmonies were retained, but here they were paired up with disco beats and snyth flourishes. This was dance-pop in the days before Klaxons came along, adding bullshit mysticism and 'psychedelia' to essentially the same blueprint.

You See Colours, however was the most consistent and the most remarkable of what this sub-genre of indie-pop would become. Lead single 'Valentine' was easily the greatest pop song of 2006, impossible not to dance to and where lesser songs would peter out achieves a second gust of wind, seemingly destined to trigger a thousand strobes. And this didn't have that much over the rest of the record: 'You And Me', 'This Town's Religion' and 'Winter's Memory of Summer' were all top 10 singles in alternate (better) universe.

Thankfully You See Colours sold moderately well and managed to secure the band their own niche in the pop landscape and a cult fanbase. They even put out a rather brilliant third album (Everything's The Rush) last year, but despite their grand sense of scale and ear for melodies that could slay even some of the UKs best bands there's a disappointing amount of critical love or remembrance for You See Colours as the decade ends.

As a side note to this: You See Colours is one of my favourite pieces of album artwork from the past decade. At one point there was temptation to run a list chronicling these but I abandoned it on the grounds that such a complication would take more time than I had to get such a list correct.